Don't You Tell Me We Can't Have Fun!

Lessons Learned

Rain

It was June and the first full, exciting, wonderful, glorious month of summer vacation. June was, unequivocally, one of the grandest most longingly anticipated months of the year, at least for the elementary school-aged boys in my home.  The June first morning weather report stopped us in our tracks, however. The meteorologist predicted significant rain in both the short-term and in the long-term of days ahead, and we were hoping beyond all hope that the foreboding forecast of supreme sogginess was a silly mistake. No way.  Can’t happen.  But the gray sky and air heavy with humidity did nothing to redeem our hope, until at last, the clouds cracked open thus beginning the unending deluge. It rained and rained and rained and rained. The unrelenting downpour saturated the ground carving muddy trenches through the newly seeded, newly washed away lawn.  With noses pressed to the windows, we watched and waited. To be sure, there were moments when the rain slowed and then stopped, but those moments didn’t last long, and although we did go outside when we could, we invariably came back in soaked and mud-covered. Now, soaked and mud-covered are not distasteful costumes to wear, at least among the members of our family, but the Great Lake sized puddles all around definitely curtailed the biking and boarding trail-riding adventures synonymous with summer fun.   Rain, rain, and more rain day after drippy day the same. Grrrrrr.  That’s it. No more waiting. Time for action. You simply cannot wait for the conditions to be right to have fun, you must make the fun. So, in that spirit, we pitched a tent on our screen porch and it became our vacation cabin. Each day, we carried different toys, activities, and projects into our vacation cabin, brought the dog, too, and for hours on end we played, built, listened to stories, nibbled on camping snacks, and enjoyed our vacation from, and in spite of, the rain. We vacationed the entire month of June in our cabin on the porch and honestly it was one of our most delightful vacations ever. With July came the sunshine and the heat and a new attempt at the lawn. Out came the bikes, scooters, and skate boards as the ground firmed up and beckoned the summerly  frequent neighborhood kick-the-can extravaganzas. Some complained that we lost June that year because of the rain, but I think we took the rain and made of those lemons a sweet and delicious creative lemonade known as camping on the porch. It was the longest, most fabulous vacation cabin adventure we had ever enjoyed before or since. It was a treasured, excellent time, that year it rained the entire month of June.